Childbirth Rituals Research Articles

Women’s Experiences in the Childbirth Care Process: An Integrative Review

Introduction: Childbirth is recognized as a physiological process essential to procreation and societal development. Nevertheless, it often lacks adequate discussion on humanized care practices. Therefore, it is necessary to identify women’s experiences during vaginal birth care to create practices that ensure better quality care. Objective: To characterize scientific evidence related to women’s experiences during vaginal birth care. Materials and Methods: An integrative review was conducted following Cooper’s methodology; six databases were reviewed: Cochrane, PubMed, Science Direct, Springer, Scopus, and Cinahl, using the descriptors: Normal Birth; Humanized Birth; Humanization of Care; Obstetric Violence; Qualitative Research, in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, limited to the 2010-2023 period, with the following inclusion/exclusion criteria: Qualitative full-text articles on vaginal births with a score of 8 or higher according to CASPe. Results: Six thematic units emerged: microaggressions and macro-impacts: childbirth: between pain and fear; acting with respect: childbirth as a natural process; silencing, enduring, and bearing; my birth, my choice; making the invisible visible: normalizing violence during childbirth; and the ritual of childbirth: women’s dignity. Conclusions: Women’s childbirth experiences are influenced by the cultural contexts in which they live; the biomedical model and traditional practices clash and impact women’s lives. Women must know their reproductive rights to contribute to a humanized childbirth.

Life Cycle Rites in Worldview System of Buryat People (Material from Archive of S. P. Baldaev)

The significance of this study lies in the necessity of conducting a scientific analysis of folklore and ethnographic materials collected by one of the first folklorists in ethnic Buryatia, S. P. Baldaev. The analysis was carried out on texts recorded in the Transbaikal and Pre-Baikal regions, which relate to the rituals of the Buryat life cycle, including wedding rituals, childbirth rituals, and initiation rituals. These rituals had a fundamental influence on the formation of the worldview of traditional Buryat society. It is emphasized that the life cycle rituals clearly differentiated gender and age responsibilities and regulated interpersonal relationships within the family. Folklore and ethnographic data preserved in the Center for Eastern Manuscripts and Xylographs of the Institute of Mongolian Studies, Buddhist Studies, and Tibetology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences are introduced into scientific circulation. The results of the study will contribute to enriching the Buryat understanding of the world order with new facts and historical materials, which are relevant both for academic science and for contemporary society, which has a demand for the revival of traditional values.

어떤 가족의례가 살아남는가?: 결혼과 임신·출산의례의 젠더 및 세대 비교

This study examines which traditional family rituals have survived among marriage, pregnancy, and childbirth rituals, focusing on gender and generational differences. In total, 1,319 adult participants were recruited for the survey, and this group comprised adults from the baby boomer generation (BB: born between 1955 and 1963), Generation X (born between 1964 and 1980), Generation M (born between 1981 and 1996), and Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2003). Cross-tabulation analyses were utilized for the comparison according to gender and generation, and STATA 17.0 was used. The results demonstrated that both men and women agreed with having marriage rituals such as going on a honeymoon, taking wedding photos, and making and sending out wedding invitations. Regarding pregnancy and childbirth rituals, both men and women agreed with having prenatal education, eating seaweed soup after birth, and having a first-year birthday party. Regarding the generation analyses, generations X and M tended to disagree with marriage rituals, while generations BB and Z tended to agree with them. In this study, we discussed the necessity of family rituals according to gender and generation based on the family rituals that have survived.

THE RITUAL CULINARY LEXIS RELATED TO THE BIRTH OF A CHILD IN THE BULGARIAN DIALECTS (SEMANTICS AND MOTIVATION)

The paper presents ritual culinary lexis related to the ritual of childbirth from the Bulgarian dialects. In the ethnocultural aspect, the motivational sign of the names that underlie the nomination are studied, and according to which they are classified into separate groups. Ethnographic material is of particular importance in determining the motivational sign of the names, although there are terms in which it would be very difficult to determine the motivating word even in the context of the whole ritual. In each group the culinary terms are presented with their meanings and distribution in the Bulgarian language territory. The material is excerpted from the "Archive for Bulgarian Dialect Dictionary" at the Institute for Bulgarian Language "Prof. Lyubomir Andreychin" - BAS, "Bulgarian etymological dictionary", from field work and other written dialect sources. The semantics of the names is analyzed in the context of the birth rite with which it is directly related. Some changes in the semantic structure of the names, unfolded in diachrony, are pointed out. They have changed their meaning and have gradually changed from specialized names to commonly used words. The aim is to show the close connection between rituals and ritual lexis and the need to study this lexis from both linguistic and cultural point of view, as a significant part of the terms are motivated by the names of rituals and ritual realities.

The Image of Saint Margaret and the Motif of the Woman and the Dragon

Abstract This article investigates the function of Saint Margaret’s image and legenda in childbirth rituals during the late medieval and early modern periods. Illuminating the discrepancy between visual and textual descriptions of the saint’s encounter with a dragon, it con­tends that the saint’s image is based on the millennia-old motif of the woman and the dragon, and that this image was conceived of as similar to images of fertility demons. The portrayal of the saint as collaborating with the dragon and taming it offered guidance to women in surmounting the pains of labor, and was aimed at providing them with a sense of empowerment and control during childbirth.

The childbirth rituals of the Yakuts: traditions and modernity

The purpose of this paper is to consider the transformation of the maternity rites among the Yakuts from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 21st centuries. The area under research is the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Eastern Siberia. The main source base was represented by the authors' field materials collected in 2016-2018 in the Verkhnevilyuysky, Churapchinsky, Ust-Aldansky, and Megino-Kangalassky districts. The field studies were conducted using modern and traditional methods of qualitative sociology. The key methods of collecting field ma-terials included modern historical-anthropological methods of inclusive observation, and expert and in-depth inter-viewing of local residents. The stages of the ritual behavior practiced in preparation for conception, pregnancy, dur-ing childbirth, and during the postpartum period, as well as aimed at survival of the newborn, have been identified and clarified. The study of the transformation of the maternity rites shows that in the modern culture of the Yakuts there are only few prohibitions related to the life of the child in the first days after birth, whereas other rituals have faded away due to the development of medicine and the loss of fear, among both women and society as a whole, of infertility or death of the woman in labor or the baby in the process of birth itself.

보편적 출산문화 정립을 위한 전통 출산의례 이해와 현대적 변용 고찰

이 연구는 출산의례의 과거와 현재를 통해 한국 출산문화를 이해하고 보편적 출산문화 형성에 기여하고자 하였다. 이를 위해 한국인의 출산의례의 배경인 삼신이 포태와 산육을 관장하며, 그 신앙은 다층적으로 존재하였으나 지금은 일정한 문화적 의미를 획득하였다는 점을 살폈다. 또한 산전의례 중 불임·난산·낙태에 대한 민속적 대응의 특징과 민간의료로서의 의미를 분석하고, 산후의례는 통과의례적 의미는 약화되었으나 현대 상업성과 맞물려 지속가능한 문화로 자리잡았다는 점을 확인하였다. 과거 출산의례와 현재 출산의료는 관심사가 유사하고 의료가 보편화된 지금도 출산의례가 지속된다는 점에서 출산의례는 출산문화의 중요한 영역이기에, 이러한 점을 고려하여 출산문화의 정립이 이루어져야 할 것이다.

On Childbirth Rituals in Modern Dagestani Cities: Islam, Traditions, Innovations

The article explores some aspects of modern childbirth rituals and practices among the city dwellers of Dagestan, focusing on their syncretic nature and the mixture of traditional and new customs. Proper Islamic religious ceremonies occupy a significant place in the childbirth rituals, among them being mawlid, on the occasion of the birth, name-giving of a new-born, circumcision, visiting ziyarats, etc. Traditional ceremonies include the custom of treating a new mother with flour porridge, putting a child in a traditional cradle, the first hair-cut ceremony, the loss of the first tooth, the first steps of the child, etc. Some of the popular rites were invented in the Soviet and post-Soviet times.

РОДИЛЬНАЯ ОБРЯДНОСТЬ НА О. КЕФАЛОНИЯ (ПО МАТЕРИАЛАМ ПОЛЕВЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ 2019 Г.)

РОДИЛЬНАЯ ОБРЯДНОСТЬ НА О. КЕФАЛОНИЯ (ПО МАТЕРИАЛАМ ПОЛЕВЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ 2019 Г.)

Efukwini: Sacredness and the aesthetics of birth amongst amaXhosa.

Efukwini is an IsiXhosa concept that refers to a birthplace in an umXhosa home. It is where the mother and her new-born will spend the first 10 days of his/her life away from the rest of society, attended to by a select group of older women or guardians. During this time, the child will be given a name and ukuwisa (the falling off of the stump of the umbilical cord) which is called inkaba is expected to take place. In short, this ritual takes the foetus from birth to babyhood. Similarly, a parallel can be drawn between ulwaluko (the initiation ritual), which takes a boy to manhood. Newly graduated initiates are referred to as amakrwala, a name bestowed upon them during the process of ulwaluko. The young male initiates are to remain inside the ceremonial home for the first week. Both these rituals are considered sacred among the amaXhosa people. However, in more recent times, the birth ritual has lost its appeal. This article therefore seeks to discuss, explain and theorize the purpose and meaning of the practice of efukwini from a narrative pastoral care perspective. A secondary aim is to understand why less emphasis has been placed on the ritual of childbirth while the practice of ulwaluko has survived the transition into modern day IsiXhosa culture.

From Girlhood to Motherhood: Rituals of Childbirth and Obstetrical Medicine Re-Examined through John Milton.

This article considers how seventeenth-century writer John Milton engages in modes of thinking that register the obstetric revolution occurring during the period. During a time when physicians were gaining entry to the birthing room, a medical rhetoric of childbirth was developing that cast childbirth in new pathological terms. Milton's A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle demonstrates how childbirth was influenced by emerging obstetrical language and practice, as well as the ways in which a writer might question such influence. Finally, this article also draws links between disrupted historical rituals of childbirth and modern anxieties about medically-centred birthing practices.

A Comparative Study of Bulgarian and Chuvash Childbirth Rituals

A Comparative Study of Bulgarian and Chuvash Childbirth Rituals

The childbirth rituals of Coho Sre in Di Linh District, Lam Dong Province

The rituals of ethnic minority groups contain many values and cultural norms. They are closely linked to the social system including the economy, culture, education, etc. However, the culture of the ethnic minorities has been changed in either positive or negative direction for numerous reasons. This paper focuses on presenting the tradition and changes of the childbirth rituals of Coho Sre living in Di Linh District, Lam Dong Province based on the field research to clarify the cultural characteristics of ethnic minority groups and to contribute reference materials to those interested in this issue.

Spiritual Suffering and Physical Protection in Childbirth in the South English Legendary Lives of Saint Margaret

This essay argues that the South English Legendary's life of Saint Margaret, patron saint of childbirth, reflects the devotional practice of imitatio Christi when it represents labor pains not as the shameful curse of Eve but as a miraculous moment in which the mother is united with Christ through her pain. Analysis of five late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts reveals that the legend is fashioned as a practical guide to the experience and rituals of childbirth. The legend also suggests that the act of engaging with Margaret's life (whether through prayer, reading, or listening) functions in a way similar to the rite of baptism by evoking the saint's protection of mothers and infants during childbirth. More so than other late medieval versions of her life, the SEL life of Margaret connects bodily and salvific suffering, emphasizing the shared experience of pain among laboring woman, saint, and Christ.

The Experience of Postnatal Depression in Immigrant Mothers Living in Western Countries: A Meta-Synthesis.

Postnatal depression affects women from all cultures and countries. The postnatal period is thought to be a vulnerable time for all mothers. Immigrant women may be at particular risk as they attempt to adhere to childbirth rituals in western societies which might exacerbate stress, while navigating through the multiple stressors they face from migration in the transition to motherhood. This study utilized a meta-synthesis approach to synthesize qualitative studies exploring postnatal depression in immigrant mothers living in western countries. Searching six databases identified 16 studies that met criteria. The synthesis revealed two overarching themes of migration and cultural influences on immigrant mothers that interact and give rise to psychosocial understandings of postnatal depression, remedies and healthcare barriers. Mothers used self-help coping strategies in line with this. Immigrant mothers living in western countries are subject to multifactorial stressors following childbirth, increasing their susceptibility to postnatal depression. These stressors relate to being an immigrant in a western society and cultural influences, which may be harder to comply with, when removed from their sociocultural context. Social support appears to play a mediating role for these immigrant mothers. There were several similarities between immigrant and non-immigrant mothers including their views of healthcare and medication, their health-seeking behaviours and their fears of having their baby removed. All these findings have implications for healthcare settings in terms of assessments and service delivery. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In this meta-synthesis, we explored the experience of postnatal depression in immigrant women living in western countries, including the UK, the USA and Canada. Sixteen qualitative studies were reviewed, and their methodological quality was examined. The findings are based a total sample of 337 women. Two overarching themes were identified that are termed 'cultural influences' and 'migration factors', which influenced how these mothers coped with their postnatal depression. Social support played a mediating role for these immigrant mothers.

Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria, by Sarah Abrevaya

Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria, by Sarah Abrevaya Stein. Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press, 2014. xv, 261 pp. $85.00 US (cloth), $27.50 US (paper). In the early 1960s, a team of anthropologists introduced the Western world to the hidden Jews of the Algerian Sahara. They described primitive tribes, untouched by modernization. Tribesmen had traditional occupations, like metallurgy, and they lived in deplorable conditions. Women engaged in unusual childbirth rituals. These tribes were said to trace directly back to Moses. For years following their emigration in 1961, prior to Algerian independence in 1962, even well-meaning conversations about this group focused on their ill-preparedness for the modern world. Jewish experience in the M'zab was neither as rigid nor as pristine as it seemed. Under the years of French colonial rule, a legal barrier kept Jews out of the polity; Saharan Jewish communities were in fact adaptable and eager to modernize. Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria is a book about how these people were constricted, policed, and monitored. In fact, Sarah Abrevaya Stein argues that the very concept of their indigeneity was a French innovation. Jews were targets of the French colonial strategy to divide and rule--to segregate natives to manage the territory. Administrators elevated the status of Northern Algerian Jews, judging them to be closer than others to European lifestyles. Stein's book tells a lesser-known story about the Jews of the southern Algerian territories. Governed by a military administration, these people were not only restrained from the benefits of citizenship, they were also restricted from travel, medical care, and modern education. In 1882, the French annexed the Saharan territory as a protectorate, not an integrated departement as in the north. (Jews from Northern Algeria were naturalized in 1871.) Over the next eighty years of French governance, the administration denied Southern Jews the privilege of citizenship. The administration left behind a paper trail of justifications for this discrepancy between north and south. This archival material forms the basis of Stein's research. Saharan Jews were exempt from taxes, state registries, and military service, and they could neither vote nor attend public schools. They were governed by so-called which permitted them to engage in polygamous marriages, and allowed uncomplicated divorce proceedings. Colonial administrators reasoned that Southern Jews would live according to the Torah instead of French civil law. Although some bureaucrats suggested that Mosaic Law preserved cultural freedoms, Stein argues that it euphemized a negative legal identity (p. …

Medical Anthropology: The International Library of Essays in Anthropology by Cecil G. Helman

Health& History 1112 2009 161 itswithdrawal from themedical pharmacopeia was not unique, and followed a well-established protocol often repeated with recreational drugs. With these two slight criticisms aside, Psychedelic Psychiatry is intensely interesting; an important and influential peri od of transition in psychiatry that has direct and important implications for current psychiatry, especially in relation to issues of cannabis and ecstasy. I highly recommend it to others, and have already passed the book on. MATHEW MARTIN-IVERSON UNIVERSITY OFWESTERN AUSTRALIA Cecil G. Helman, Medical Anthropology: The International Library of Essays in Anthropology (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008). ISBN 978-0-7546-2655-8 (HC). 580pp. Medical historians are by nature and necessity intellectual bowerbirds?seeking ideas and information in disparate disciplines?and so we cannot escape medical anthropology. This cross-disciplinary approach, however, can create difficulties. In 1913 Gertrude Stein wrote a 'Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.' In one sense, medical anthropology likewise is as easily described. Recent articles in anthropological journals have argued, however, that there is a pressing need to articulate what anthropological knowledge consists of. In other worlds what is a rose? For me, as a medical historian with an interest, but no expertise, inmedical anthropology, Stein's reflection struck a chord. Iwas aware of the crises thathad occurred periodically since thebeginnings ofmodern anthropol ogy in the late nineteenth century, one example being Freeman's assault onMargaret Mead and the subsequent response from her supporters. Anyone seeking a description of the volatile state of affairs in anthropology need go no furtherthan theAnnual Review ofAnthropology in the last decade for a fuller telling of the tale.And medical anthropology has been a central part of themore general disciplines of both social and physical anthropology since theCambridge Torres Strait expedition at thebeginning ofmodern anthropology. At times,within Helman's book, I have difficulty seeing a strong distinction between medical anthropology and sociology, as the frequency with which the terms 162 BOOKREVIEWS are interchanged in some of the chapters (for example, Christopher Keane's chapter, "What isWorld Health?") fails to clarify any distinction. Where is thedividing line between medical anthropology and medical sociology? Does it matter if there isn't one? In the introduction Helman points out that,as a distinct discipline medical anthropology is only a few decades old and that the need for this anthology is due to the fast changing nature of the discipline. He also points out that a major focus ofmedical anthropology since the 1980s has been its 'criticism ofWestern medicine' and has seen biomedicine as 'Western society's own ethnomedicine' (p. xvi). How different from its early days as the handmaiden of colonial rule! He proposes that in the future the discipline will have to become more of a truly 'biocultural discipline' with a greater awareness of the 'biological dimensions of human health and illness' (p. xxvi). Is this another expression of uncertainty about the direction medical anthropology has taken as a discipline? This anthology is clearly aimed at a university audience but contains nothing new, only previously published articles thatHelman considers tobe seminal. Also, presumably all the articles are available online. It reads very much like a course handbook. The anthology is divided into three sections. The first, Basic Concepts, includes two articles each on "food and nutrition," "alcohol and drug use," "medical pluralism and traditional healers," "languages of distress," and "rituals of childbirth and distress," along with eight articles on "transcultural psychiatry"?a favoured topic of the discipline. The second section, Applied Anthropology: International Health, ismade up of one article each on "what is 'World Health,'" "diarrhoeal diseases," "malaria," and "infectious diseases" and two articles each on "family planning" and "HIV." The third section, Contemporary Issues: The Body, contains four pieces on disparate topics such as the anthropology of birth and death, and body donations inBuddhist society. There is a good deal ofmaterial of interest in this volume, with notable absences that are to be expected in such anthologies, such as the work of Paul Farmer on infectious diseases. As someone who has been greatly impressed by theway Michael Marmot and Richard Wilkinson in the area of population health have synthesised sociological, anthropological, and historical methods to produce...

<i>Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England Sara H. Mendelson Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England. By Mary E. Fissell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 283. $45.00 (cloth). Professor Fissell’s fascinating new book is an enjoyable as well as instructive example of the advantages of applying a sophisticated interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of complex historical topics. Written with wit and panache, her study offers something for nearly everyone, including social and political historians, scholars of gender and women’s studies, and historians of science and medicine. While Fissell’s erudition and meticulous scholarship enable her to make contributions in a number of separate fields, her book is in the end far more than the sum of its parts. Vernacular Bodies explores three basic themes. First, the narrative outlines major trends in ordinary people’s understanding of the workings of women’s reproductive bodies as well as commonly accepted notions about the physical and psychological determinants of female health and disease. [End Page 522] Second, Fissell analyzes the politics of reproduction—including the creation and perpetuation of lay medical knowledge and of gendered social institutions and also the reproduction of human beings—on every level of the social and political hierarchy. Third, the book investigates the ways that these two seemingly independent variables interacted with each other to generate new models of the human reproductive process over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With a continual focus on these general themes, Vernacular Bodies follows a chronological framework that allows Fissell to speculate on causal relations between medical theories about women’s bodies, the politics of the family, and the politics of the state. Four historical “moments” dominate the narrative: first, the sixteenth-century English Reformation, with its rejection of traditional female-centered rites of childbirth; second, the surge in negative images of the female sex, expressed in cheap popular print at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; third, the series of religio-political “gender troubles” that emerged throughout the English Civil War and Interregnum in the middle of the seventeenth century; and, finally, a “crisis in paternity” associated with the Restoration of monarchy after 1660. According to Fissell, each of these periods represents a different stage in the evolution of popular ideas about multiple connections between gender and sexuality, the reproductive process, and the social and political institutions that sustained the state as a stable entity. The first chapter, “Reforming the Body,” traces the effects on rituals of childbirth of Protestant theological reforms in sixteenth-century Britain. Catholic Europe had encouraged potential mothers to think of themselves as vital agents in the reproductive process, replicating in the pains and perils of labor the miracle of Christ’s birth from a mortal woman. In a venue defined as exclusively female, women in the throes of childbirth prayed to the Virgin Mary for an easy and successful labor while making use of magical charms, relics, and other cultic objects associated with the mother of Jesus. At least at the level of official church policy, all this changed radically with the English Reformation. Henrician reformers denounced “superstitions” linked to the rites of childbirth, commanding women to pray directly to Christ rather than resort to a female intermediary. The biblical Eve rather than the Virgin Mary was now the model for women in childbirth, and there was more emphasis on the Genesis doctrine that female labor pains were a well-deserved punishment for Eve’s active role in original sin. Yet theological mandates from above only gradually took hold among the female populace. Some contemporary religious works directed specifically at women, like Thomas Bentley’s Monument of Matrones (1582), show the extent to which beliefs and practices even among the educated elite were a mixture of the old and the new. Throughout the early modern period religious change was a process of “accommodation and appropriation,” as [End Page 523] Fissell points out (48). Instead of religious relics associated with the Virgin Mary, pregnant women made use of the “eagle-stone,” an object believed to have magical properties that was widely recommended for easing a difficult labor by sixteenth...

Clothing Bodies, Dressing Rooms: Fashioning Fecundity in The Lisle Letters

One of the preparations for early modern childbirth was obtaining the necessary material goods for the pregnancy, birth, and lying-in. Indeed, for noble families, childbirth was marked by the increase in bought and borrowed possessions surrounding and enclosing the body of the pregnant woman. Traditionally and historically, both mother and father had defined roles to play in preparing for the birth of a child. But it was not just parents who participated in the materiality of childbirth rituals; servants, too, had their part to play. Through the objects and clothes that male servants provided, men were able to prepare for pregnancy in ways that broader society deemed legitimate and necessary. The role of Lord Lisle's man, John Husee, in procuring bedding and clothing for Lady Lisle's lying-in reveals a crucial episode in the material and emotional construction of early modern maternity.

The Poetics and Praxis of Enclosure: Julian of Norwich, Motherhood, and Rituals of Childbirth

This essay locates Julian of Norwich’s textual construction of Christ’s maternity within a set of material practices, arguing that the “meaning” of Christ’s maternity within Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love cannot be fully understood outside of the context of the interrelated ritualized practices of medieval childbirth and anchoritism. Specifically, this essay contends that Julian’s experience as an anchoress, her images of Christ as mother, and medieval ceremonies of childbirth are threaded together by a discourse and a praxis of enclosure in which the cell of the medieval anchoress resembles and recalls the lying-in chamber of a medieval mother. Understanding ritual practice as constitutive of knowledge and subjectivity, the author argues that Julian’s textual fascination with Christ’s motherhood should be understood as deriving from the material parallels that existed between her experiences as an anchoress and those of laboring women and new mothers in the Middle Ages.